Becoming A Mogul: Nely Galan

Nely Galan's Mission: Empower Women To Become Self-Made

Nely Galan, Self Made Media Mogul, has dedicated her mission to teach women, regardless of their background or age, how they too can become entrepreneurs.

Nely Galan: Emmy winner, best-selling author, Latina & Media Mogul, is on a mission to empower women through entrepreneurship. Her New York Time's best selling book Self-Made is an inspiration for women of all backgrounds to become financially self-reliant and be self made. In our interview this empowering dynamic leader doesn't hold back:

How to start your entrepreneurial journey

How to surround yourself with a supportive circle of influence (get rid of the haters)

You don't need a prince charming - you hold your future

Disfruta! Enjoy!

XOXO,

Codie Sanchez Baker

Codie: Tell us about your new book:

It’s called Self-Made. I believe that so many women out there are self-made or becoming self-made and we don’t declare ourselves. We diminish how we call ourselves.

When I ask women, “What do you do?”

[They say,] “oh I clean houses”.

“Well, how many houses do you clean?”

And they say, “15 houses.”

I go, “Oh so, you have a janitorial service. Do you have a LLC? Are you writing off your expenses?”

It’s all how we speak about ourselves. I want women to see that self-made is an identity and it’s an identity to be proud of.

Codie: For people who don’t know you and don’t know this book, give us your 60 second story.

I am an immigrant first of all. Everything I know is from being an immigrant. We are such hard workers y nos metemos en el hueco de una abuja (and we put ourselves in the hollow of the needle) we know how to get things started. We are emprendedoras (entrepreneurs). We are starters. I built a business in media over 20 years ago. I was the first Latina president of a TV network Telemundo. Then I became a producer and I produced about 700 TV shows. I was still at a very young age and was able to go back to school and get a master's and doctorate. In that time I realized that I had to write and tell the story of Latinas around money and entrepreneurship. I’ve gone around the country, I founded something called the Adelante Movement to train Latinas in enterpreneurship and I've been on the road for four years and this book Self-Made comes from all of that experience.

Codie: If you had to take one key principle from your book for people reading this interview to go and do today, what would that be?

I think that everybody thinks that entrepreneurship is some grandiose thing and I think it really isn't. It's Beginning. I tell women and anybody: Sunday's: One hour a week Go! Go to your closet and find something you don't want, that you already aren’t using, and take a picture and put it on eBay or Amazon and begin. Don’t leave your job and just start a business. Stay in your job, that thing is making money. You're going to put that money away and you're going to get excited and sell some more. And then you're going to start going to things and meeting people. Alone in La Casa nothing is going to happen. Okay? You got to create a team around you. So the only way to do that is to go join a Chamber of Commerce, join a professional organization, meet people. When you go into the bank meet the banker! You need to start asking questions. You don't just leave your job. You start one hour a week and start building a circle of influence around you.

Codie: I think we all have fear and uncertainty in starting. So when you’re faced with fear do you have something like a self-talk or process that you do to get over it?

I do! Well first of all you should know, that from 2 or 3 of my successes that sound really great, I've had hundreds of failures. So fear and failure happen to be my best friends. So for me I do visualization. Fear shows up everyday of my life period. And I make believe I'm on an airplane and I'm looking out the window and there's turbulence and I see a cloud. And I tell myself okay breathe through this because I'm very nervous about airplanes and I breathe through it and I know it will pass. Because fear is not a fact it's just a feeling. So visualize that you're in a cloud and if you just keep going on the plane and the cloud goes away.

And by the way, when you're afraid of something you have to do it.

You have to do it. Because on the other side you will be like oh my God that was not a big deal and that starts adding up and then you get less afraid and less afraid and when fear shows up you say ok. You say no big deal this isn't going to kill me I'm just going to do it anyway.

Codie: Through your myriad of projects that you have, what's one project you feel the most passionate about right now?

Well I'm passionate about everything as you can imagine, I’m a passionate person. But right now we just did a website called Becoming Self Made that has deep information particularly hidden money in America for people that don't realize. There’s more money for entrepreneurs then there are jobs in America. We launched in Spanish the Spanish site Adelante Emprendedora. Everything in there is to give resources to the Latino community and to other women and to other small business owners, but particularly in Spanish for Latinos which are my pet project and give them information about how to get started.

Codie: Last question, how did you start building your strategic network?

When I started my business for the first four years I did not make one penny. And it's because I had no circle of influence. Like many of us I was embarrassed to ask questions. I joined my local Chamber of Commerce. I joined an organization at the time called YEO (young entrepreneur organization) and it began to change my life. And I started to have a relationship with my Latina banker! So to me the relationship with your chamber and the relationship with your bank is key to your future. if we don't understand the system, if we don't understand who to go to, if we don't understand that we need help: we're not going to make it past the hurdles. Entrepreneurship is very hard, but it’s totally attainable. And it's very easy once you have your circle of influence.